A certain woman in Governor Mike Sonko’s cabinet told a journalist in an interview that her boss would sometimes call in the middle of the night when she was asleep. It stressed her. The husband was getting worried.
If she did not take the call, Sonko would put her through hell the next day. That was one of the many reasons she quit the lucrative job as a county executive. Sonko would spend an entire cabinet meeting haranguing the executives, she said. He would rubbish proposals executives and experts had burnt the midnight oil to put together.
Out of the blue, Sonko would unleash a string of wild allegations about any executive who was daring – or foolish – enough to try to contradict the city county boss. It was always his way, or the highway.
On Thursday, December 3, Sonko was impeached after three years of vipindiree at City Hall and court cases over corruption and allegations of abuse of office.
Akwende huko! The media yelled in unison.
“The fall of the paper General,” the Daily Nation headline celebrated on December 4. “For a governor who once put his phone call with President Uhuru Kenyatta on a speaker in public to demonstrate his powerful connections, the impeachment of Mr Mike Sonko yesterday marked a dramatic fall from power,” the paper reported.
Kimathi Street described Sonko as “the flamboyant county boss who ruled City Hall with theatrics, bravado and a display of opulence, including gold chains.”
The Kiswahili editors at Taifa Leo did not disappoint: “Sonko ajua hajui,” the lead story stated. “End of the road for Sonko regime,” the People Daily said.
Citizen TV reported about the end of three years of Sonko’s “tumultuous rule at City Hall”.
The Standard headline said: “How the King of Drama fell”. The daily attributed Sonko’s fall to the “combined might of conspiratorial ward representatives and a conniving wider political establishment that was fed up with him”.
In other words Nairobi residents are not fed up with the governor? Mombasa Road appeared to be sorry the curtains had come down on Sonko’s high theatrics that produced catchy headlines.
The paper eulogised the King of Bling as “the once popular governor who punched walls for the poor-oppressed, cried a river for the widowed and persecuted and offered parallel government services to the neglected poor of the city.”
Sonko’s meteoric rise from an unknown businessman with a dubious background to Makadara MP in 2010, to Nairobi’s first senator in 2013 and finally to the most powerful governor in Kenya in 2017 is as much a tale of personal ambition, filthy lucre and power as it is about how the media helps impose demagogues on the people as their leaders.
When Sonko’s story is written – no, no, we are writing it already – one of the salient conclusions will doubtless be that he was a masterful manipulator of the media that portrayed him, from the start, as the liberator of the city’s poor.
Knowing how the media loves drama, form rather than substance, Sonko has been a permanent feature in the news since his entry into politics. The cameras would roll or click away and reporters scribble furiously as he punched the perimeter wall of “grabbed” public land or when he rolled on the ground and wailed about the city’s woes.
Reporters and editors would forget the gravity of The Hague trials and indulge Sonko in his antics in purported support for Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto when they battled crimes against humanity charges at the International Criminal Court.
A KTN report in 2014 showed how Senator Sonko worked hard in his office serving Nairobi residents who sought his help for every problem. The cameras rolled as he doled out money for various needs and followed him to Uhuru Highway where he donned a police reflector jacket and briefly played traffic cop.
A man of the people.
Sonko won millions of hearts in Nairobi and across Kenya with the Sonko Rescue Team, which provided services city residents were entitled to but never received from the government. The media hardly questioned such publicity stunts.
Only after he became the governor – and after his much-publicised fallout with the UhuRuto government – did many people begin to notice the shame of having such a clown as the CEO of a respected international business and diplomatic hub hosting the headquarters of two UN agencies.
No doubt, the media played a key role in catapulting Mike Sonko to City Hall. Any lessons learnt?
